A Barista Spills the Beans: A Dark Roasted Tale About My Time At Starbucks by P.N.M.I. JamesonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This isn’t “How Starbucks Saved My Life”, the rise from the ashes book by Michael Gill. The author clearly states it isn’t in the beginning of her book on working for a Starbucks in a tony part of MSP. But I don’t know about that. These books were cut from the same cloth, so to speak. Both are fish out of water stories, but that mostly revolved around being older than the normal Starbucks worker. While Gill is trying to figure out a new way after a late career layoff, Jameson describes herself in a way saying this is just another in a long progression of similar jobs, this one promising health insurance. And Gill uses his Starbucks experience to learn about himself through friendships with his co-workers and through repeated and monotonous job processes, Jameson actually does the same. Although, once again, she doesn’t admit this. By the end of the book, she has learned a bit about herself. Her detailed, humorous descriptions of her co-workers are the bulk of the book, and she has cataloged them well. There were way too many co-workers over the summer Jameson documented to keep track of them all. I blame store location and management and the fickleness of many young denizens of barista nation. And so does she. In reaching a similar age as the author, I have thought of becoming a semi-retired barista, but this is yet another book that dissuades me from the world that shows the job as an awful lot of work for often questionable management. Jameson starts her story describing her prior job in a gift store for older ladies. I found this to be very funny. Jameson tells stories well, but she has a voice, or more an attitude, that can rub the reader wrong at times. It comes across as very real, and on the whole I enjoyed her story. I would read more by Jameson.
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